I can’t figure out what to do

It’s been three months since I left my job as Rep. Justin Amash’s Communications Director. Part of the reason I moved on was to start publishing under my own name again as I did for years before the transition to Capitol Hill. But I’m stuck. It’s not just writer’s block, although I think that’s part of it. As I’ve told a few people, I’m still trying to find my voice.

The fact is, I spent the better part of a decade as a mouthpiece for liberty Republicans predicated on the notion that the GOP was improving and had a more libertarian future ahead of it. I naively believed this like gospel for a long time. I wishcasted this destiny for a living. It was arguably a part of my identity. Now, the very thought of calling myself a Republican makes me feel gross, and the respect I had for many conservative politicians and pundits has waned precipitously, to phrase it perhaps more politely than I should.

Longtime followers of my work will recall how I watched in horror as Trump rolled over an impressive lineup of Republican presidential candidates in 2016, including my first choice Rand Paul, and ultimately my second choice, Ted Cruz. (I miss that version of Cruz, by the way.) Back then, at least it felt as though most of the conservative movement was watching in horror along with me. Now, we exist in another universe entirely, and I’m struggling to adapt as I approach it through the lens of a commentator as opposed to the relatively passive observer I’ve been for two years.

To give a sense of my timeline, Trump became the GOP nominee just weeks before I started in Justin’s office during August of 2016. The Republican National Convention occurred between the time Justin offered me the job and my start date. In fact, live tweeting that clown show was my last hurrah speaking only for myself and not representing a politician, albeit an unconventional one who restricted me less than more traditional congressmen would, but a politician nonetheless. I could no longer criticize or offer up snark without it being tied to Justin. It took time to adjust my habits, but I finally learned what the parameters were and, measured by my prior standards, shut up.

Back when I started with Justin, Trump was still considered by the vast majority of people to be an unfortunate but temporary aberration. Everything I had published up to the point when I stopped writing for myself assumed that Hillary would crush Trump and the conservative movement could laugh away that awkward time a profoundly ignorant New York wannabe authoritarian won the GOP nomination because he’s famous for the fact that he’s been trolling everyone since the 80s. The world I expected to enter when I started writing again simply doesn’t exist.

Where do I go in a conservative movement that has either embraced Trump wholeheartedly or resigned itself to him? It seems to me that nearly everyone has decided character doesn’t matter, you know, as long as we’ve got our judges and our tax cuts ($21 trillion in debt be damned, too). Publications I would’ve wanted to write for in the past, people I would’ve happily worked with, organizations or politicians I would’ve consulted for … I simply don’t trust them anymore.

I realize that this metaphor is dramatic, but the situation contains many of the emotions endemic to a breakup. Like someone I had faith in betrayed me. On the one hand, sure, if you work in this industry, you’re going to become jaded. But I honestly thought the conservative movement as a whole, with all of its preexisting flaws and strange bedfellows, was better than this. To see wholesale political tribalism trump any semblance of principle, decency, and quite frankly sanity, is disturbing. Yes, pun intended.

Plenty of folks I respected—and many randos on the internet—think I’m a loser for feeling this way. For not cheering Trump on when he acts like an insane person. For criticizing him when he doubles down on policies the same people hated from Obama. For refusing to believe that the wholesale degradation of conservatism that comes with allowing Trump, who is anything but genuinely conservative, define the term in the eyes of the public is worth it for a couple of temporary policy wins (which also ignores the bad policies, as Trump’s defenders are wont to do).

There’s a part of me that knows this too shall pass and everyone will start hero worshipping the new kid in town when he or she arrives on the scene. But this is the current landscape, and I fear that Trump will leave a stain on the conservative movement that won’t be easily erased. Perhaps I’m wrong about this like I, and nearly everyone else, was wrong about Hillary losing to him, but I don’t see how conservatives who have embraced President Grab ‘Em By The You-Know-What can ever claim a moral high ground again.

So here I am, wondering if the conservative movement still has space for a libertarian former Republican who refuses to play the hero worship flattery games necessary to make it in Trump’s warped, ego-driven world. There’s also a part of me that wonders if I even want to make it in this particular world at all, which has been part of the rut I find myself in.

Why try to associate with people who don’t want me around? Do I even want to bother attempting to persuade those who tell me I suffer from derangement syndrome because I haven’t engaged in the mental gymnastics necessary to convince myself that Donald Trump, whose active disdain for free speech, constitutional restraint, fiscal discipline, and the vast majority of beliefs considered to be conservative prior to 2016 is our de facto conservative standard bearer?

I go back and forth on this question. We do need dissenting voices. And of course, not everything is about Trump. There are millions of worthy topics to write about, and one of my goals is to expand beyond the pigeonhole of politics. But it’s still jarring to navigate a landscape that not long ago felt like home to me yet looks unrecognizable now.

So there it is. My first attempt to articulate this dilemma in writing. To be fair, the trouble is also that I’ve been telling myself the first piece I publish post-Capitol Hill has to be a Big Thing at a Big Outlet. But no, it really doesn’t. I’ve been allowing that expectation to hold me back as I ghostwrite for others. As it turns out, a stream of consciousness rant on my blog is a perfectly acceptable alternative.

32 thoughts on “I can’t figure out what to do”

Thank you. I really enjoyed your post and it echoed what I have been saying to anyone who will listen over the last two years. I think it is so important that sane people engage friends, family, and loved ones in a rational way that helps the see what is truly happening. Many people simply don’t pay attention and here snippets from FoxNews, see the economy doing fine, and assume things can’t really be THAT bad, can they?

This too shall pass. When it does, there does need to be voices left on the other side that never cnpromised their integrity. Cheers to the start of your writing career. I hope it goes well!

Rule number one for libertarians: All politicians not named Ron Paul will inevitably disappoint. LOTE applies to all others, though we are not required to vote for them.

There is barely such a thing as “conservativism” extant currently. To the degree there is, the appropriate term is paleoconservative, last represented with any degree of national recognition in 1952 by Robert Taft.

To escape feelings of uselessness and restore your taste for the good fight, keep always handy selected works from the likes of the too neglected greats: Garet Garrett, John T Flynn, Zora Neale Hurston, Rose Wilder Lane, Robert Taft, Florence King and Isabel Paterson. They will renew your vigor, build your base philosophy and lead you to fight the battles ahead. A good writer must write, write and rewrite.

The world works in weird ways. Presently we live in the era of Trump. Most everybody who has taken aim at Trump has regretted it. We could also try to take aim at Trump, but I am not sure why we would do any better than those who are already exhausting themselves trying. But we need to aim at something. There are so many worth causes that do not require an opinion about Trump. More broadly, there is preparing for a time after Trump. What do we want that to look like? It’s not that far off. It could be only two years or it could be only six years, but it will come and faster than you think. Better to focus on those things, than in wasting your energies and exhausting yourself like so many other people are doing in trying to destroy Trump.

If a hug would do any good, consider yourself hugged. And know that there are more than a few of us, many twice your age, who are in that rut with you. You’ll find us poking our heads up every now and then doing what we can to put a finger in the dam…but mostly in very local sorts of ways nonetheless regretting what could have been and waiting for “us” to remove the log from our own eyes.

I think there are some Democrats who have libertarian leanings. Former congressman and current Governor of Colorado, Jared Polis, comes to mind. It’s really an issue-by-issue question. There are great bipartisan coalitions that exist to oppose issues like unconstitutional surveillance and undeclared war. But you’d be hard pressed to find anyone, on both sides at least at the moment, who cares at all about fiscal discipline. Minus maybe Justin (Sanford did, but he’s gone now).

This is an incredible article. There is no place in the Republican Party for people who believe in individualism and the Constituion. I’m obviously biased, but my bias was created in nearly the same way as you. I’d rather lead from behind than follow from the front. Thank you for this blog post, because there are so many people who feel the exact same way as you do.

This wasn’t a character election. Neither had the character of Bush or Obama. To many of us this election was about judges, SCOTUS and others. He’s delivered pretty well there.

As far as desenting, not everything is about Trump. One can always leave the elephant in the room alone. Address other issues… keep involved, there will be life after Trump in a few years, two or six. The thing is, comment constructively along the way. Maintain as positive a view as possible.

Until Conservatives depose The Orange One, his family, his staff, past and present; and until every lawmaker in Congress and the Senate who supported him wholeheartedly are in prison, there is no way The Republican Party will regain any meaningful place in National Governance. It is critical we insist on leadership with honor and integrity. Justin is a good example. The late President Bush was another. This should be their Role Models and the top priority going forward. Conservatives must not continue to be seen as the Party of Racists, Rapists, Child Molesters and Lying Scoundrels. Either Conservatives work hard to rebuild their image, or scrap it entirely and start over. Look what happened to the Republican Party in California this past election. And you might as well kiss the 2020 elections goodbye as well. Maybe Republicans will have a comeback by 2024. Maybe.

I am not a conservative – far from it. But it seems to me that the conservative movement needs principled people like you. A phenomenon likeTrump could have happened on the other side of the political spectrum and the result might well have been similar. So, write about what you know, as they say, because there are more people like you than, perhaps, you imagine. And, it is important that they hear from someone who was inside the sausage factory and saw how they make the sausages (to borrow from Bismarck).

Thank you. And thanks for recognizing that this could’ve happened on the other side of the aisle as well. Political tribalism means more to people than almost anything else. We have to work together to overcome it.

Agreed. I had always considered myself a Libertarian but close to the Republicans and willing to work with them as I saw shared ideals there . . . but mostly those have crumbled under Trump and I see very little left in the Republicans that I have anything in common with. The Democrats are working hard to erase any trace of classic liberalism from their creed as well. It is a lonelier time than usual in politics to be a Libertarian.

I came to this piece via “Reason”, which I read regularly despite being a neoliberal Democrat. My own take on the Republican Party, which I express on my blog, “Literature R Us”, is naturally quite different. Ever since the rise of Newt Gingrich, the whole purpose of the Republican Party has been destruction for the sake of destruction. Rush Limbaugh, joined by Drudge and Fox News, is what the party has been all about, with Wall Street picking up the tab. I admire people like yourself and wish you success, somehow and somewhere.

I’ve long since given up on the GOP, as sad as that is. I waved off the moral majority in the 80s, then the neocon warmongers, as fringe elements, but it has become clear that the Republican Party will happily house those who would infringe on liberty by legislating their morality/religion, discriminating against those who are different from themselves, fighting immigration, stifling trade in the name of protectionism, and defending completely unnecessary use of military force in inappropriate places and circumstances. since he Democrat Party has long since been anti-freedom, anti-economy, and anti-worker (i.e., pro-union), and only opposes improper use of force for political gain, and not because it is improper, I’ve been left without a Party. worse, the two parties seem to mostly agree on he anti-liberty principles of big government, tax & spend policy ‘choices’, manipulated rather than free markets, and dictating personal choices to individuals (they only differ on specifics), and since they have consistently shaped he political system in the US o eliminate competition in politics outside the duopoly, it is nearly impossible to find someone to represent me. I have no solution – I just hope that a clear statement of the problem might inspire someone smarter than me.

You are a ROCK STAR! in my book, and I congratulate you fully.
Great post too – very personal. Well done!

As for me: I’m still here in The Woodlands, TX, and my personal reaction to everything in recent politics has been “to dial it back a bit”.

I’m no longer a GOP Precinct Chair, and our (multiple) local TEA Parties now have smaller gatherings than “back in they day”, (which I don’t attend).

“King Wally Wilkerson” has staged an insurrection in the MCRP (Montgomery Party Republican Party). This spring, we FINALLY elected enough CONSERVATIVE Precinct Chairs that when MCRP had it’s last biennial meeting, our majority voted for NEW BYLAWS, under which Wally had to SHARE POWER.
SHARE???

Since that meeting back in March, he has rebelled and continued to dis-avow everything. It’s a hiatus – a spectacle – an embarrassment. Pray for us!

But back to you: Here’s my advice:

1) Write, write, write.
Corie, you’ve got it, so use it.
Story: At a recent reunion, I met my 9th grade English Teacher of mine – from back from when I was in High School in the Philippines – and her first question was: “Are you still writing? You were such a good writer!”.
I’m not, but Corie, you are.

2) Your marriage. You can’t do wrong by diving in 100% to your spouse and your marriage. Marriages have seasons – and you can strive to make this a PRODUCTIVE SEASON!!!

FYI, we now have 4 children, and THEY are my proudest achievement! And my oldest daughter is now engaged – Praise God!

I generally lean left politically, but I also agree with many libertarian pillars (personal responsibility, property rights, sound fiscal management). I routinely read conservative website op/ed pieces for a hint of a willingness to admit that Trump the grifter and mob boss has us on the road to perdition. I don’t find it often. I’m happy to have found your piece…it restores a bit of my faith that all conservatives have not lost their minds.

God bless and hang in there!! I too am in disbelief over what’s going on with Trump. But not just him, the entire party. I left the Republican party this year and feel alone and isolated. I stopped following most politics and have moved on to focusing on my writing career and other hobbies. I realized I can’t change the world but am merely a reluctant passenger on a doom bound ship. As Bill Clinton once said, “I feel your pain.” I fear for the future of this country and the future of my children. I can only pray and prepare. I refuse to give up hope but I will no longer let the fetid stench of Washington and politics and moronic politicians ruin my life and continue to darken my mood. We, the electorate, have done this. But I daresay the feckless leadership on our side allowed the Trump tornado to occur. The storm will blow over and hopefully things will go back together. My sincerest blessings to you, Cory. I know exactly how you feel